Changes to the Google Maps API Licensing

Google has announced that after June 11 they will require additional verification and possibly cost for using the Google Maps API. If you signed up for an API key you should have received an email with information about this change. We recommend moving to the OpenStreetMap (OSM) plugin in our WordPress environment.

If you are using the Google Maps API and will need it to continue working after June 11, please contact us with the URL of the site where you’re using it.

Uploading Large Images to WordPress

We’ve recently received reports from several people having trouble uploading large images to our WordPress sites. If your image is larger than 4500×4500 pixels in dimension, our WordPress sites may not be able to generate a thumbnail of it with the resource limits we allow. The image will still appear in your media library and can be used in posts, but some features may not work without a thumbnail, like image gallery plugins.

After the end of the current semester, we’ll be working on some performance improvements to WordPress that may allow us to increase the resources available. Until then, we recommend resizing your image to less than 4500×4500 pixels in dimension before uploading it to WordPress.

Fixes and Tweaks

MediaWiki was moved to a new server with PHP 7.1 installed.

SiteImprove had trouble crawling our site on Tuesday, April 17 and has had intermittent crawling since then. We’ve worked with them to increase their crawl rate and fix issues. SiteImprove reports should be going out as normal now.

We’ve fixed a glitch that was preventing course groups in the Course Hubs from updating from Banner so add/drops should be flowing through to the Hubs again.

Added CAS support for PeopleGrove.

Ongoing Work

Fixes and tweaks for the new Institute site https://www.middlebury.edu/institute/

Upgrading applications to run on PHP 7.1.

Upgrading the Drupal sites for the Davis programs, Dining Menus, and Museum of Art to Drupal 8.

On Monday, April 16, the shared drive used to store files for our Drupal sites filled up, preventing new files from being uploaded and causing logins to the Course Hub sites to fail. We’ve added monitoring to ensure that we’re alerted ahead of time that this resource is close to filling up so it can be expanded again, if needed, without causing a service interruption.

Drupal 8.5.1 & 7.58

The Institute site has been upgraded to Drupal 8.5.1, addressing a security vulnerability. For full documentation of changes, please see Drupal’s development log. All systems utilizing Drupal 7 have been updated to 7.58, which addresses the same security concern. More information is available here.

New WordPress Plugin

We have added the WordPress plugin WP Accessibility which adds a number of helpful accessibility features with a minimum amount of setup or expert knowledge. Some features include:

Add a toolbar toggling between high contrast, large print, and desaturated (grayscale) views of your theme.

Enable skip links with WebKit support by adding JavaScript support to move keyboard focus.

Add a long description to images. Use the image’s “Description” field to add long descriptions.

Removed WordPress Plugins

In continuing our upgrade of systems to PHP 7.1, we discovered several more WordPress plugins that are no longer in use or no longer working and removed them. These include:

WordPress Twitter Widget Pro

WordPress Status Updater

WordPress Middlebury Photo of the Week

WordPress Dipity Embedder

WordPress Delicious For WordPress

WordPress Custom Image Sizes

WordPress Audio Player

Removed Drupal Modules

As part of the upgrade to Drupal 8.5.1, the following plugins were deemed unneeded and removed.